Editor's Note: As FTW has begun to investigate serious
discussions by legitimate scientists and academics on the possible 'necessity'
of reducing the world's population by more than four billion people, no
stranger set of circumstances since Sept. 11 adds credibility to this possibility
than the suspicious deaths of what may be as many as 14 world-class microbiologists.
Following on the heels of our two-part series on the coming world oil crisis,
this story by Michael Davidson, a graduate of the Syracuse University School
of Journalism, is one which takes on a unique significance. In our original
story, we incorrectly reported the original date of disappearance of Don
Wiley and two other microbiologists. These errors have been corrected and
we have updated the story to include new deaths that have occurred since
we published an earlier version on Feb. 14. The newest connections to DynCorp,
Hadron and PROMIS software are leads an amateur would not miss. How else
would any microbiologists threatening an ultra secret government biological
weapons program be identified than by secretly scanning their databases
to see what they were working on? -- MCR

(FTW) - In the four-month period from Nov. 12 through
Feb. 11, seven world-class microbiologists in different parts of the world
were reported dead. Six died of "unnatural" causes, while the
cause of the seventh's death is questionable. Also on Nov. 12, DynCorp,
a major government contractor for data processing, military operations
and intelligence work, was awarded a $322 million contract to develop,
produce and store vaccines for the Department of Defense. DynCorp and Hadron,
both defense contractors connected to classified research programs on communicable
diseases, have also been linked to a software program known as PROMIS,
which may have helped identify and target the victims.

In the six weeks prior to Nov. 12, two additional foreign
microbiologists were reported dead. Some believe there were as many as
five more microbiologists killed during the period, bringing the total
as high as 14. These two to seven additional deaths, however, are not the
focus of this story. This same period also saw the deaths of three persons
involved in medical research or public health.

· On Nov. 12, Benito Que, 52, was found comatose
in the street near the laboratory where he worked at the University of
Miami Medical School. He died on Dec. 6.

· On Nov. 16, Don C. Wiley, 57, vanished, and
his abandoned rental car was found on the Hernando de Soto Bridge outside
Memphis, Tenn. His body was found on Dec. 20.

· On Nov. 23, Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, was found
dead in Wiltshire, England, not far from his home.

· On Dec. 10, Robert Schwartz, 57, was found murdered
in his rural home in Loudoun County, Va.

· On Dec, 11, Set Van Nguyen, 44, was found dead
in the airlock entrance to a walk-in refrigerator in the laboratory where
he worked in Victoria State, Australia.

· On Feb. 8, Vladimir Korshunov, 56, was found
dead on a Moscow street.

· And on Feb. 11, Ian Langford, 40, was found
dead in his home in Norwich, England.

OOPS!

Prior to these deaths, on Oct. 4, a commercial jetliner
traveling from Israel to Novosibirsk, Siberia was shot down over the Black
Sea by an "errant" Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, killing
all on board. The missile was over 100 miles off-course. Despite early
news stories reporting it as a charter, the flight, Air Sibir 1812, was
a regularly scheduled flight.

According to several press reports, including a Dec.
5 article by Barry Chamish and one on Jan. 13 by Jim Rarey (both available
at www.rense.com), the plane is believed by many in Israel to have had
as many as five passengers who were microbiologists. Both Israel and Novosibirsk
are homes for cutting-edge microbiological research. Novosibirsk is known
as the scientific capital of Siberia, and home to over 50 research facilities
and 13 full universities for a population of only 2.5 million people.

At the time of the Black Sea crash, Israeli journalists
had been sounding the alarm that two Israeli microbiologists had been recently
murdered, allegedly by terrorists. On Nov. 24 a Swissair flight from Berlin
to Zurich crashed on its landing approach. Of the 33 persons on board,
24 were killed, including the head of the hematology department at Israel's
Ichilov Hospital, as well as directors of the Tel Aviv Public Health Department
and Hebrew University School of Medicine. They were the only Israelis on
the flight. The names of those killed, as reported in a subsequent Israeli
news story but not matched to their job titles, were Avishai Berkman, Amiramp
Eldor and Yaacov Matzner.

Besides all being microbiologists, six of the seven scientists
who died within weeks of each other died from "unnatural" causes.
And four of the seven were doing virtually identical research -- research
that has global, political and financial significance.

QUE PASA?

The public relations office at the University of Miami
Medical School said only that Benito Que was a cell biologist, involved
in oncology research in the hematology department. This research relies
heavily on DNA sequencing studies. The circumstances of his death raise
more questions than they answer.

Que had left his job at a research laboratory at the
University of Miami Medical School, apparently heading for his Ford Explorer
parked on NW 10th Avenue. The Miami Herald, referring to the death as an
"incident," reported he had no wallet on him, and quoted Miami
police as saying his death may have been the result of a mugging. Police
made this statement while at the same time saying there was a lack of visible
trauma to Que's body. There is firm belief among Que's friends and family
that the PhD was attacked by four men, at least one of whom had a baseball
bat. Que's death has now been officially ruled "natural," caused
by cardiac arrest. Both the Dade County medical examiner and the Miami
Police would not comment on the case, saying only that it is closed.

A MEMPHIS MYSTERY

Don C. Wiley of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at
Harvard University, was one of the most prominent microbiologists in the
world. He had won many of the field's most prestigious awards, including
the 1995 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for work that could
make anti-viral vaccines a reality. He was heavily involved in research
on DNA sequencing. Wiley was last seen around midnight on Nov. 15, leaving
the St. Jude's Children's Research Advisory dinner held at the Peabody
Hotel in Memphis, Tenn. Associates attending the dinner said he showed
no signs of intoxication, and no one has admitted to drinking with him.

His rented Mitsubishi Galant was found about four hours
later, abandoned on a bridge across the Mississippi River, headed towards
Arkansas. Keys were in the ignition, the gas tank full, and the hazard
flashers had not been turned on. Wiley's body was found on Dec. 20, snagged
on a tree along the Mississippi River in Vidalia, La., 300 miles south
of Memphis. Until his body was found, Dr. Wiley's death was handled as
a missing person case, and police did no forensic examinations.

Early reports about Wiley's disappearance made no mention
of paint marks on his car or a missing hubcap, which turned up in subsequent
reports. The type of accident needed to knock off the hubcaps (actually
a complete wheel cover) used on recent model Galants would have caused
noticeable damage to the sheet metal on either side of the wheel, and probably
the wheel itself. No damage to the car's body or wheel has been reported.

Wiley's car was found about a five-minute drive from
the hotel where he was last seen. There is a four-hour period in his evening
that cannot be accounted for. There is also no explanation as to why he
would have been headed into Arkansas late at night. Wiley was staying at
his father's home in Memphis.

The Hernando de Soto Bridge carries Interstate 40 out
of Memphis, across the Mississippi River into Arkansas. The traffic on
the bridge was reduced to a single lane in each direction. This would have
caused westbound traffic out of Memphis to slow down and travel in one
lane. Anything in the other two closed lanes would have been plainly obvious
to every passing person. There are no known witnesses to Wiley stopping
his car on the bridge.

On Jan. 14, almost two months after his disappearance,
Shelby County Medical Examiner O.C. Smith announced that his department
had ruled Wiley s death to be "accidental;" the result of massive
injuries suffered in a fall from the Hernando de Soto Bridge. Smith said
there were paint marks on Wiley's rental car similar to the paint used
on construction signs on the bridge, and that the car's right front hubcap
was missing. There has been no report as to which construction signs Wiley
hit. There is also no explanation as to why this evidence did not move
the Memphis police to consider possibilities other than a "missing
person."

Smith theorizes that Wiley pulled over to the outermost
lane of the bridge (that lane being closed at the time) to inspect the
damage to his car. Smith's subsequent explanation for the fall requires
several other things to have occurred simultaneously:

· Wiley had to have had one of the two or three
seizures he has per year due to a rare disorder known only to family and
close friends, that seizure being brought on by use of alcohol earlier
that evening;

· Wiley had to be standing on the curb next to
the guardrail which, because of Wiley's 6-foot-3-inch height, would have
come only to his mid-thigh.

These conditions would have put Wiley's center of gravity
above the rail, and the seizure would have caused him to lose his balance
as the truck created the bounce and blast of wind, thus causing him to
fall off the bridge.

SCIENCE IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD?

Robert M. Schwartz was a founding member of the Virginia
Biotechnology Association, and the Executive Director of Research and Development
at Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology. He was extremely well respected
in biophysics, and regarded as an authority on DNA sequencing.

Co-workers became concerned when he didn't show up at
his office on Dec. 10. He was later found dead at his home. Loudoun County
Sheriff's officials said Schwartz was stabbed on Dec. 8 with a sword, and
had an "X" cut into the back of his neck.

Schwartz's daughter Clara, 19, and three others have
been charged in the case. The four are said to have a fascination with
fantasy worlds, witchcraft, and the occult. Kyle Hulbert, 18, who allegedly
committed the murder, has a history of mental illness, and is reported
by the Washington Post to have killed Schwartz to prevent the murder of
Clara. At the request of Clara Schwartz's attorneys, on Feb. 13 Judge Pamela
Grizzle ordered all new evidence introduced about her role in the case
to be sealed. She also issued a temporary gag order covering the entire
case on police, prosecutors and defense attorneys.

BREATHE DEEPLY, AND CARRY A BIG STICK

Set Van Nguyen was found dead on Dec. 11 at the Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's animal diseases facility
in Geelong, Australia. He had worked there 15 years. According to an article
on www.rense.com by Ian Gurney, in Jan. 20001 the magazine Nature published
information that two scientists at this facility, using genetic manipulation
and DNA sequencing, had created an incredibly virulent form of mousepox,
a cousin of smallpox. The researchers were extremely concerned that if
similar manipulation could be done to smallpox, a terrifying weapon could
be unleashed.

According to Victoria Police, Nguyen died after entering
a refrigerated storage facility. "He did not know the room was full
of deadly gas which had leaked from a liquid nitrogen cooling system. Unable
to breathe, Mr. Nguyen collapsed and died," is the official report.

Nitrogen is not a "deadly" gas, and is a part
of air. An extreme over-abundance of nitrogen in one's immediate atmosphere
would cause shortness of breath, lightheadedness, and fatigue -- conditions
a biologist would certainly recognize. Additionally, a leak sufficient
to fill the room with nitrogen would set off alerts, and would be so massive
as to cause a complete loss of cooling, causing the temperature to rise,
which would also set off alerts these systems are routinely equipped with.

A RUSSIAN, BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AND OLD CORPSES

In 1989, Vladimir Pasechnik defected from the Former
Soviet Union (FSU) to Great Britain while on a trip to Paris. He had been
the top scientist in the FSU's bioweapons program, which is heavily dependent
upon DNA sequencing. Pasechnik's death was reported in the New York Times
as having occurred on Nov. 23.

The Times obituary indicated that the announcement of
Pasechnik's death was made in the United States by Dr. Christopher Davis
of Virginia, who stated that the cause of death was a stroke. Davis was
the member of British intelligence who de-briefed Dr. Pasechnik at the
time of his defection. Davis says he left the intelligence service in 1996,
but when asked why a former member of British intelligence would be the
person announcing the death of Pasechnik to the US media, he replied that
it had come about during a conversation with a reporter he had had a long
relationship with. The reporter Davis named is not the author of the Times'
obituary, and Davis declined to say which branch of British intelligence
he served in. No reports of Pasechnik's death appeared in Britain for more
than a month, until Dec. 29, when his obituary appeared in the London Telegraph,
which did not include a date of death.

Pasechnik spent the 10 years after his defection working
at the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research at the UK Department
of Health, Salisbury. On Feb. 20, 2000, it was announced that, along with
partner Caisey Harlingten, Pasechnik had formed a company called Regma
Biotechnologies Ltd. Regma describes itself as "a new drug company
working to provide powerful alternatives to antibiotics." Like three
other microbiologists detailed in this article, Pasechnik was heavily involved
in DNA sequencing research. During the anthrax panic of this past fall,
Pasechnik offered his services to the British government to help in any
way possible. Despite Regma having a public relations department that has
released many items to the press over the past two years, the company has
not announced the death of one of its two founders.

FEBRUARY, BLOODY FEBRUARY

On Feb. 9 the news publication Pravda.ru reported that
Victor Korshunov had been killed. At the time, Korshunov was head of the
microbiology sub-facility at the Russian State Medical University. He was
found dead in the entrance to his home with a cranial injury. Pravda reports
that Korshunov had probably invented either a vaccine to protect against
biological weapons, or a weapon itself.

On Feb. 12 a newspaper in Norwich, England reported the
previous day's death of Ian Langford, a senior researcher at the University
of East Anglia. The story went on to say that police "were not treating
the death as suspicious." The next day, Britain's The Times reported
that Langford was found wedged under a chair "at his blood-spattered
and apparently ransacked home."

The February 12 story, from the Eastern Daily Press,
reports that clerks at a store near Langford's home claim he came in on
a daily basis to buy "a big bottle of vodka." Two of the store's
staff also claim Langford had come into the store a few days earlier wearing
"just a jumper and a pair of shoes." None of the store's staff
would give their name.

It is hard to understand how a man can reach the highest
levels of achievement in a scientific field while drinking "a big
bottle of vodka" on a daily basis, and strolling around his hometown
nearly nude. A Feb. 14 follow-up story from the Eastern Daily Press says
police believe Langford died after suffering "one or more falls."
They say this would account for his head injuries and large amount of blood
found at the death scene.

THE HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE -- ANOTHER LINK?

There is another intriguing connection between three
of the five American scientists that have died. Wiley, Schwartz, and Benito
Que worked for medical research facilities that received grants from Howard
Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). HHMI funds a tremendous number of research
programs at schools, hospitals and research facilities, and has long been
alleged to be conducting "black ops" biomedical research for
intelligence organizations, including the CIA.

Long-time biowarfare investigator Patricia Dole, Ph.D.
reports that there is a history of people connected to HHMI being murdered.
In 1994, Jose Trias met with a friend in Houston, Texas and was planning
to go public with his personal knowledge of HHMI "front door"
grants being diverted to "back door" black ops bioresearch. The
next day, Trias and his wife were found dead in their Chevy Chase, Md.
home. Chevy Chase is where HHMI is headquartered. Police described the
killings as a professional hit. Tsunao Saitoh, who formerly worked at an
HHMI-funded lab at Columbia University, was shot to death on May 7, 1996
while sitting in his car outside his home in La Jolla, Calif. Police also
described this as a professional hit.

BEYOND THE BIZARRE

Early-October saw reports that British scientists were
planning to exhume the bodies of 10 London victims of the 1918 type-A flu
epidemic known as the Spanish Flu. An October 7 report In The Independent,
UK said that victims of the Spanish Flu had been victims of "the world's
most deadly virus." British scientists, according to the story, hope
to uncover the genetic makeup of the virus, making it easier to combat.

Professor John Oxford of London's Queen Mary's School
of Medicine, the British government's flu adviser, acknowledges that the
exhumations and subsequent studies will have to be done with extreme caution
so the virus is not unleashed to cause another epidemic. The uncovering
of a pathogen's genetic structure is the exact work Pasechnik was doing
at Regma. Pasechnik died six weeks after the planned exhumations were announced.
The need to exhume the bodies assumes no Type-A flu virus sample exists
in any lab anywhere in the world.

A piece on MSNBC that aired September 6 makes the British
exhumation plans seem odd. The story refers to an article that was to be
published the following day in the weekly magazine Science, reporting the
1918 flu virus had recently been RNA sequenced. Researchers had traced
down and obtained virus samples from archived lung tissue of WWI soldiers,
and from an Inuit woman who had been buried in the Alaskan permafrost.

HELP WANTED, SPIES, AND A LINK TO PROMIS

Almost immediately at the outset of the anthrax scare,
the Bush administration contracted with Bayer Pharmaceuticals for millions
of doses of Cipro, an antibiotic to treat anthrax. This was done despite
many in the medical community stating that there were several cheaper,
better alternatives to Cipro, which has never been shown to be effective
against inhaled anthrax. The Center for Disease Control's (CDC) own website
states a preference for the antibiotic doxycycline over Cipro for inhalation
anthrax. CDC expresses concerns that widespread Cipro use could cause other
bacteria to become immune to antibiotics.

It was announced Jan. 21 that the director of the CDC,
Jeffrey Koplan, is resigning effective March 31. Six days earlier it was
announced that Surgeon General David Satcher is also resigning. And there
is currently no director for the National Institutes of Health -- NIH is
being run by an acting director. The recent resignations leave the three
most significant medical positions in the federal government simultaneously
vacant.

After three months of conflicting reports it is now official
that the anthrax that has killed several Americans since October 5 is from
US military sources connected to CIA research. The FBI has stated that
only 10 people could have had access, yet at the same time they are reporting
astounding security breaches at the biowarfare facility at Fort Detrick,
Md. -- breaches such as unauthorized nighttime experiments and lab specimens
gone missing.

The militarized anthrax used by the US was developed
by William C. Patrick III, who holds five classified patents on the process.
He has worked at both Fort Detrick, and the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.
Patrick is now a private biowarfare consultant to the military and CIA.
Patrick developed the process by which anthrax spores could be concentrated
at the level of one trillion spores per gram. No other country has been
able to get concentrations above 500 billion per gram. The anthrax that
was sent around the eastern US last fall was concentrated at one trillion
spores per gram, according to a Jan. 31 report by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg
of the Federation of American Scientists.

In recent years Patrick has worked with Kanatjan Alibekov.
Now known by the Americanized "Ken Alibek", he defected to the
US in 1992. Before defecting, Alibek was the no. 2 man in the FSU's biowarfare
program. His boss was Vladimir Pasechnik.

Currently, Ken Alibek is President of Hadron Advanced
Biosystems, a subsidiary of Alexandria, Va.-based Hadron, Inc. Hadron describes
itself as a company specializing in the development of technical solutions
for the intelligence community. As chief scientist at Hadron, Alibek gave
extensive testimony to the House Armed Services Committee about biological
weapons on Oct. 20, 1999, and again on May 23, 2000. Hadron announced on
Dec. 20 that as of that date, the company had received $12 million in funding
for medical biodefense research from the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, and the NIH.
Hadron said it was working in the field of non-specific immunity.

In the 1980s Hadron was founded and headed by Dr. Earl
Brian, a medical doctor and crony of Ronald Reagan and an associate of
former Attorney General Edwin Meese. Brian was convicted in the 1980s on
fraud charges. Both Hadron and Brian have been closely associated in court
documents and numerous credible reports, confirmed since Sept. 11, with
the theft of enhanced PROMIS software from its owner, the INSLAW Corporation.
PROMIS is a highly sophisticated computer program capable of integrating
a wide variety of databases. The software has reportedly been mated in
recent years with artificial intelligence. PROMIS has long been known to
have been modified by intelligence agencies with a back door that allows
for surreptitious retrieval of stored data. [For more information on what
PROMIS can do and its history, please use the search engine at www.copvcia.com.]

Given this unique capability, and Hadron s prior connections
to PROMIS, it is a possibility that the software, by tapping into databases
used by each of the victims, could have identified any lines of research
that threatened to compromise a larger, and as yet unidentified, more sinister
covert operation.

A PATTERN?

The DNA sequencing work by several of the microbiologists
discussed earlier is aimed at developing drugs that will fight pathogens
based on the pathogen's genetic profile. The work is also aimed at eventually
developing drugs that will work in cooperation with a person's genetic
makeup. Theoretically, a drug could be developed for one specific person.
That being the case, it's obvious that one could go down the ladder, and
a drug could be developed to effectively treat a much broader class of
people sharing a genetic marker. The entire process can also be turned
around to develop a pathogen that will affect a broad class of people sharing
a genetic marker. A broad class of people sharing a genetic marker could
be a group such as a race, or people with brown eyes.

SMALLPOX

An Oct. 17 story in USA Today reported that the US government
wanted to order 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine. Apparently, that
wish has been granted. On Nov. 28 a British vaccine maker, Acambis, announced
that it had received a $428 million contract to provide 155 million doses
of smallpox vaccine to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
This was Acambis' second contract. The company is already in the process
of producing 54 million doses. The US government has 15.4 million doses
stockpiled, and HHS plans to dilute them five to one. The two contracts
and the dilution program will bring the total HHS stockpile to 286 million
doses.

Smallpox was officially declared eradicated by the World
Health Organization in 1977, after treating the last known case in Merca,
Somalia.

MEHPA -- MEDICAL FASCISM

A meeting of the Center for Law and the Public Health
(CLPH) was convened on Oct. 5. This group is run jointly by Georgetown
University Law School and Johns Hopkins Medical School, and was founded
under the auspices of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). CLPH was formed
one month prior to the 2000 Presidential election. The purpose of the October
meeting was to draft legislation to respond to the then current bioterrorism
threat.

After working only 18 days, on Nov. 23 CLPH released
a 40-page document called the Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA).
This was a "model" law that HHS is suggesting be enacted by the
50 states to handle future public health emergencies such as bioterrorism.
A revised version was released on Dec. 21 containing more specific definitions
of "public health emergency" as it pertains to bioterrorism and
biologic agents, and includes language for those states that want to use
the act for chemical, nuclear or natural disasters.

According to the Association of American Physicians and
Surgeons (AAPS), after declaring a "public health emergency",
and without consulting with public health authorities, law enforcement,
the legislature or courts, a state governor using MEHPA, or anyone he/she
decides to empower, can among many things:

· Require any individual to be vaccinated. Refusal
constitutes a crime and will result in quarantine. · Require any
individual to undergo specific medical treatment. Refusal constitutes a
crime and will result in quarantine. · Seize any property, including
real estate, food, medicine, fuel or clothing, an official thinks necessary
to handle the emergency. · Seize and destroy any property alleged
to be hazardous. There will be no compensation or recourse. · Draft
you or your business into state service. · Impose rationing, price
controls, quotas and transportation controls. · Suspend any state
law, regulation or rule that is thought to interfere with handling the
declared emergency.

When the federal government wanted the states to enact
the 55 mph speed limit, they coerced the states using the threat of withholding
federal monies. The same tactic will likely be used with MEHPA. As of this
writing the law has been passed in Kentucky. According to AAPS, it has
been introduced in the legislatures of Arizona, California, Delaware, Illinois,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. It is expected
to be introduced shortly in Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, and Wisconsin.
MEHPA is being evaluated by the executive branches in North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington, DC.

The research the microbiologists were doing could have
developed methods of treating diseases like anthrax and smallpox without
conventional antibiotics or vaccines. Pharmaceutical contracts to deal
with these diseases will total hundreds of millions, if not billions, of
dollars. If epidemics could be treated in non-traditional ways, MEHPA might
not be necessary. Considering the government's actions nullifying many
civil liberties since last September, MEHPA seems to be a law looking for
an excuse to be enacted. Maybe the microbiologists were in the way of some
peoples' or business' agendas.

We also know that DNA sequencing research can be used
to develop pathogens that target specific genetically related groups. One
company, DynCorp, handles data processing for many federal agencies, including
the CDC, the Department of Agriculture, several branches of the Department
of Justice, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the NIH. On Nov.
12 DynCorp announced that its subsidiary, DynPort Vaccine, had been awarded
a $322 million contract to develop, produce, test, and store FDA licensed
vaccines for use by the Defense Department. It would be incredibly easy
for DynCorp to hide information pertaining to the exact make-up, safety,
efficacy and purpose of the drugs and vaccines the US government has contracted
for.

Reasons to suspect DynCorp of criminal behavior are not
hard to find. Investigative reporter Kelly O Meara of Insight Magazine,
in a story dated February 4, disclosed a massive US military investigation
of how DynCorp employees in Bosnia had engaged in a widespread sex slave
ring, trading children as young as eight and videotaping forced sexual
encounters. She reviewed government documents and interviewed Army investigators
looking into the activities which had spread throughout DynCorp's contract
operations to service helicopters and warehouse supplies for the US military.
Videos and other evidence of the crimes are in the Army s possession. And
in a February 23rd story, veteran journalist Al Giordano of www.narconews.com
reported that a class action suit had been filed in Washington, D.C. by
more than 10,000 Ecuadorian farmers and a labor union against DynCorp for
its rampant spraying of herbicides which have destroyed food crops, weakened
the ecosystem and caused more than 1,100 documented cases of illness.

DynCorp's current Chairman, Paul Lombardi responded to
the suit by sending intimidating letters in an unsuccessful attempt to
force the plaintiffs to withdraw.

DynCorp has also been directly linked to the development
and use of PROMIS software by its founder Bill Hamilton of Inslaw. DynCorp
s former Chairman, current board member and the lead investor in Capricorn
Holdings, is Herbert 'Pug' Winokur. Winokur was, until recently, Chairman
of the Enron Finance Committee. He claimed ignorance as to the fraudulent
financial activities of Enron s board even though he was charged with their
oversight.